Download World Class Soccer

Do you remember the giants of football? Do you remember the legends like Diego Armando Maradona? Van Basten didn’t make it through the eight finals as the selector for Neitherlands this year, but can you guide him to score the winning goals back in the year 1990? And never the less it was the last world cup with the united Yugoslavian team with players like Šuker (who scored the most goals in 1998 world cup in France) and Prosinečki (who’s the only player that played and scored for two different national teams).

All that and so much more can be seen in the World Class Soccer (also known as Italy 90).

But let’s take this step by step.

First of you need to run the game and some people will be glad to hear it’s WinXP compatible. I’d still suggest you try playing it in DOSBox though.

Then the game will ask you (every time) about the input device (you can use two joysticks – one for each player), graphics (I strongly suggest VGA mode) and sound options. And now the opening title appears. Like I said, you’ll have to go through this every time (the settings are not saved).

Next off you can redefine the keys (if you’re using the keyboard). This is good as both you and the other player get to decide which keys to use for what. Unfortunately this setting also doesn’t stay saved until the next time, so you’ll have to define the keys every time you play the game.

And now you finally get to play!

You can have a one player match against a computer, a two player match against a friend, or go to the WORLD CUP!

No matter which game you choose you’ll get to select the positions of your players. You’ll get the roster of players that really did play in the 1990 world cup, and you’ll get to choose the position they’ll play (look at the letters in front of their name G = goal keeper, D = defense, …). And now you get to play.

The match can last for a varied period of time (you get to set it up). You’ll just get a top down view of the part of the field with the ball. The player marked by the arrow is the one you get to directly control. There’s a sliding start option (to get the ball away from the opponent), the pass and the shot (if you have the ball). There’s not all that much you can do and the computer controls the other players (the ones that are not marked by the arrow).

And now for the question. You got to select the players. Does that reflect on the gameplay?

It does to a point. All players will be the same color, so don’t expect Franck Rijkaard to look any different then Marco Van Basten. Still their qualities will reflect in the speed with or without the ball, the ease with which the ball is taken away and the fouls made and most of all the quality of the goal keeper shows. You rarely even get to control the goally, except at shooting penalties.

You’ll see who’s at the ball though (there will be a name at the bottom of the screen.

As I mentioned before I like this game, thus I may be slightly bias. The game is simple enough, yet it offers something more then just running around behind a ball. It still lacks some things (like being able to change players, I never saw a referee in the game, the players are all alike, and so if you’re not reading the bottom of the screen you can’t tell them apart…). Still it’s fun and easy to master. It also follows to some extend the real tournament of 1990, but if you take part in it, you may change the situation completely and prevent Brazil to take the title. Just remember, the worse the team, the worse they’ll perform, the better teams are usually faster and control the ball easier.

But the game doesn’t allow you to see the whole field, the passes are mostly made blindly and it’s not as easy to score as some guys may imagine (oh, and it’s difficult to kick the ball in the goal too). So there are bad sides to it too.